Chapter 11

We all remember the five paragraph essay that was stressed to us as high school students. However, I can honestly say that when I write a paper I do not use that format. In fact, I have never been good at writing five paragraph essays. When told to formulate a thesis statement, I always had problems. I also had trouble when it came to brainstorming activities. I know that brainstorming is a strategy that needs to be taught, but how do you teach brainstorming? Oh, yes, you can model brainstorming, but is that really teaching it to the students. I agree with Conley when he said that the school curriculum needs to be redone to include the kinds of writing that are needed in college and in workplaces. (310)

I certainly agree with him. Looking back on my writing experiences in high school, I do not recall writing memos or using charts or tables. One important writing topic that I believe Conley left out was resumes. We are all getting ready to graduate. We all have to have a resume when we go interview, but I do not remember anywhere in our course work that has helped us with composing a resume.

Writing is an important communication tool in our society. Students need to set their purpose for writing, their audience, and their position. I also agree with Conley that writing should have authentic purposes. Writing for no important reason makes writing become monotonous and boring. However, students need to see the importance and relevance behind their writing assignment. I remember doing a research paper on the Tea Pot Dome Scandal. You are probably wondering what that is? I was too. It was just a topic assigned to me by the teacher. I believe that students should be given the opportunity to select their own topics when writing. This makes writing more enjoyable for the students because they may acutally be interested in the subject matter which inturn makes writing much better.